Peter Laird posted a blog today about the layout images of volume 1 #12. However, within this post, he addressed an issue he doesn’t often talk about…his falling out with Kevin. Click the picture for a lin kto the full post…or read the juicy stuff below:
This issue is somewhat significant because it marked the end — or, perhaps more accurately, the beginning of the end — of my creative partnership with Kevin Eastman. With the burgeoning success and accompanying stresses of the TMNT licensing program, then (in 1987) kicking into high gear, Kevin and I had gotten kind of sick of working with each other. It had become very difficult to produce an issue of the TMNT comic book without a lot of unpleasantness and disagreements. It got to the point where we both realized that something had to change.
I remember we had a short meeting in Pulaski Park in downtown Northampton, wherein we decided that we should take a break from each other, and alternate issues of the comic — I’d do one, he’d do the next, and so on. It fell to me to produce the next issue — I can’t remember exactly how we came to that conclusion… perhaps I already had a story, perhaps Kevin was too busy with something else. I don’t know. But the long and short of it was that, for the first time, I wrote, penciled, inked and toned an entire issue of the TMNT book, by myself.
It was fun, but a lot of work, and although it was a relief not to have to deal with Kevin on it, I did still miss his input. We did get back together some time later to work on “Return to New York” and “City at War”, but it was never quite the same. — PL
At this point, there is very little point in being upset over this kind of stuff, I would rather digest it as a glimpse into the history of the turtles. I find it extremely interesting. I thought you might too.